


Six Blocks

by flawedamythyst



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, M/M, MeetCute, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 18:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13840749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: When Clint sees two guys carrying a couch down the road, he just has to help. You know, because it's the helpful, do-gooder thing to do. Not at all because one of them is hot as hell. Well, not just that, anyway.





	Six Blocks

There were two guys carrying a couch down the road. Which wouldn’t have stood out so much in this neighbourhood, except Clint wasn’t sure how they’d even managed to lift it between themselves, let alone move with it. One of them was tiny and scrawny in a way that had made Clint think he was a kid to start with, until he saw the beard. He was holding his end up with a stubborn look of determination that was possibly the only thing lending strength to his arms.

The guy on the other end was built in a way that made Clint think he could probably lift the whole couch himself, except he only had one arm. He had a prosthetic but it didn’t look like he was using it for anything more than balance.

He was also so hot that Clint actually stopped dead in the street to admire him. God damn, he had to get closer to that. Not to do anything, the guy was probably straight or taken or both, but just to look, like you would with a piece of art that you knew was going to stick with you even after you left the museum.

The two guys stopped at a crossing to wait for the lights to change and the skinny guy put his end down while they waited, then rolled his eyes at the built guy until he did the same.

Clint was on the other side of the road but he glanced both ways and dashed through the traffic, narrowly avoiding being run over by a truck, then threw himself into a somersault that landed with him on his back on the couch.

“Oh my god, this is a good couch,” he said. “So comfortable, no wonder you’re willing to carry it all the way home.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” asked Built Guy with a glare.

“Hi, I’m Clint,” said Clint, holding a hand out to him.

Built Guy just glared harder. “Get the fuck off our couch, asshole.”

Okay, apparently Clint wasn’t getting anywhere there. He tipped his head back to look at Skinny Guy. “Are you the friendly one, then?”

“Depends on your intentions,” he said. “You ain’t having our couch.”

Clint sat up, swivelling around. “Oh, no, nope, don’t want it. I already have a couch which, granted, isn’t as good as this one, but my dog has bonded with it now and I’m pretty sure he’d pine if I changed it.”

“That’s great,” said Built Guy. “Get the fuck off our couch.” 

The lights had changed and other people were started to cross, but Clint stayed right where he was. They could cross later, once he’d properly admired Built Guy’s square jaw and pretty eyes.

“I thought you might like some help,” he said. “How far are you taking it?”

“Because I’m down an arm, you thought you could come over and be all-” started Built Guy, somehow managing to level up his aggression.

“No, not that, you seem fine, pretty sure you’ve got more muscle on one arm than most people would have on three,” said Clint, which was a pretty good example of why he shouldn’t try and talk to hot guys without Nat around to kick his shin every time he started saying something stupid. Which was every time he opened his mouth. “No, it was, uh,” he glanced at Skinny Guy, wondering what the polite way to say ‘your tiny friend’ was.

“We’re fine,” growled Built Guy in a tone that gave Clint completely inappropriate tingles.

“Actually,” said Skinny Guy, “he has a point. My arms are like wet noodles.” Built Guy sent him a glare and he just shrugged. “This is why I keep you around to open jars.”

Built Guy let out a very long-suffering sigh and Clint grinned at him. “So, are you gonna let me?”

“‘Let you’? You mean, do you the supreme favour of allowing you to carry two strangers’ couch down a Brooklyn sidewalk for six blocks? Sure, whatever, knock yourself out.”

“Awesome,” said Clint, grinning at him and hopping up off the couch. He headed to take the corner next to Skinny Guy, who obligingly moved along to give him space. “Let’s do this.”

It turned out that six blocks was a long way when you were carrying a couch. Clint consoled himself by concentrating on Built Guy’s beautiful face and those few, blissful occasions when they put the couch down and he could see the way his shirt stuck to his abs.

They reached the door of an apartment block and put the couch down so that Skinny Guy could fumble out his keys. “What floor are you on?” asked Clint, glancing up.

Built Guy gave him a dark grin. “The top one. And no, there’s no elevator. You regretting this yet?”

“Nah,” said Clint. “Never regret a good deed, right?”

“If we make it to the top without dropping either the couch or one of us down the stairs, we’ll have a beer,” said Skinny Guy, holding the door open.

Okay, that was incentive. Having a beer with a hot guy was definitely worth getting a sofa up a million flights of stairs, right?

“Jesus, Stevie,” muttered Built Guy, giving his friend a glare.

Skinny Guy just grinned back at him. “The least we can do, right?” There was a shit-eating look glinting in his eye that made Built Guy mutter something darkly, then they picked up the couch and carried it through to the lobby.

There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and carrying a couch up five storeys of stairs is one of them. And yes, Clint was paraphrasing _Harry Potter_ , but the fact remained that when they’d finally made it to the top, he knew significantly more about both of the guys than he had before. He knew Built Guy was called Bucky and would let out an awe-inspiringly blistering string of curse words if you dropped a couch on his foot by accident, and that Skinny Guy was called Steve and he might be tiny, but he was also flexible as all hell, which was very useful if you got a sofa wedged halfway around a stairwell and needed someone to duck underneath and apply pressure from a different angle.

Okay, so maybe those weren’t the most important facts about their lives, but they were enough for Clint to feel like he was getting somewhere once they’d finally got the couch inside the apartment and set it down in front of the windows.

He immediately threw himself back on it, stretching out. “Oh man, this really is a great couch.” He glanced over at Steve. “So, does dropping it on Bucky’s foot count as dropping it down the stairs, or do we still get a beer?”

Steve glanced at Bucky, who glowered back. “Oh, I think we can allow ourselves a beer, don’t you, Buck?”

He headed for the kitchen without waiting for an answer. Bucky let out a long sigh and his shoulders slumped.

“Hoping he’d go for tequila instead?” asked Clint, and Bucky turned the glower on him. Clint could see the twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth though, so he just smiled back. He was totally growing on the guy, he was going to get a full smile out of him before he left if it killed him.

And then he was going to say goodbye and go, because it was pretty obvious that Bucky wasn’t interested in him, whereas Clint just kept finding him hotter and more compelling the longer they were together. He needed to walk away before he let himself get in way too deep.

****

When Bucky had just got out of the Army, when he was still twitchy and unsettled by pretty much everything, and treating every therapy session like a hostile engagement, his therapist gave him the homework to try and get outside the apartment at least once a day.

“Even if it’s just walking down to the park and sitting on a bench for a while, thinking about how much you hate me,” she’d suggested, because he wasn’t really hiding his feelings from her.

So, he’d dutifully stomped down to the park on every day that Steve didn’t come up with some other place to drag him and glared at all the normal people, dogwalkers and families and joggers, and wondered how long it would be before the cops got called on the crazy, angry guy in the corner. If he got banned from the park, that meant he could just stay home, and fuck the therapist, right?

Except, he started getting interested in what was going on around him despite himself. That one mom who brought her kids to the playground at the same time every day so that they could run around while she sat on a bench and did what looked like schoolwork. No one would be reading _Advanced Torts: Law and Practice_ or _Constitutional Law: Religion and the First Amendment_ for fun, right?

Or the kinda chunky guy who turned up one afternoon wearing what looked like beach shorts and a determined expression as he wheezed his way on one jogging circuit of the park and then collapsed onto the grass as if he were going to die. Bucky hadn’t expected to see him again, but he kept coming back, day after day, slowly getting fitter and eventually buying actual running gear.

His favourite, though, was the hot guy with the dog. He wasn’t completely predictable on when he would show up, so Bucky took to just sitting and waiting until he did, even if it took a couple of hours. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do, right? And Hot Dog Guy was so worth it. He wore sleeveless t-shirts that showed off his biceps and always seemed to be grinning, playing with his dog as much as walking him.

He was just the kind of guy that old Bucky, pre-Army Bucky, would have gone up to and hit on, but now all he was up for was sitting and watching from the bench in the corner like a creeper.

Seriously, though, how was it that no one had called the cops?

When he’d finally got himself back together enough to get a job so that he and Steve could afford to move to a bigger apartment, one where Bucky didn’t have to sleep on the shitty futon in the lounge, he made staying within walking distance of that park his one stipulation for it. Okay, so he wasn’t going to be able to go down and perv on Hot Dog Guy every day now he was working, but there was always the weekends, right? Maybe one day he’d find the courage to go over and talk to him.

Then, as they were carrying a couch down the street and Bucky was gritting his teeth against the wave of _unfair_ because this would have been so much easier back when he still had both arms, Hot Dog Guy just appeared out of nowhere and did an impressive somersault right onto the couch.

And the thing was, Steve had heard Bucky mention Hot Dog Guy, and seen him in the park a handful of times when he joined Bucky on his walks, and knew exactly who he was. Letting him help them carry the couch and then inviting him to stay for a beer had to be some kind of epic betrayal of the best friend code, right? The minute Hot Dog Guy wasn’t sitting on their damn couch, drinking their beer and directing that appalling hot smile right at Bucky, Steve was getting a lecture on exactly why he was the worst friend ever.

But first, Bucky was going to go the bathroom so that he could get a breather from having to pretend he wasn’t developing more of a crush on the guy with every second that passed.

“So, you’re flirting pretty hard with Bucky,” he heard Steve say just before he went back into the lounge and froze. Clint had been doing what?

Well, okay, so he’d mentioned Bucky’s muscles a couple of times, but that could just have been a manly acknowledgement of the effort he’d put into working out. And his grin had grown wider every time he’d managed to make Bucky smile, but loads of people liked making people happy, it didn’t mean anything. Just because he kept looking at Bucky even when Steve was speaking and-

Shit.

It was possible Bucky was an idiot.

“Yeah,” Clint agreed with Steve easily. “Well, he’s really hot, it’s always nice to know someone appreciates that, right? Even if you’re not into them. Uh, unless he’s a homophobe, but I figure he’da punched me by now if he were.”

“Oh, he’s not a homophobe,” agreed Steve, sounding way too amused. Asshole.

“That’s cool then,” said Clint. “Don’t panic, I’m not a creeper, you don’t need to worry about me turning into a rabid stalker. I’m just gonna finish my beer and hopefully make him smile again because that’s really pretty to look at, then I’ll head out and never bother him again.”

“You think that’s what he wants?” asked Steve.

Clint laughed. “Of course it is. No one glares that much at someone they want to see more of.”

Right, okay, so Bucky was really, really fucking up his shot at Hot Dog Guy and he had about ten seconds to decide if he was just going to let it go, or if he was going to try and pull it back, and maybe get himself a new boyfriend to go with his new job and new apartment.

Was that too much all at once? Would his therapist approve of him taking on more stress?

Fuck his therapist, she’d understand when she saw Clint’s biceps.

He took a deep breath and went back into the room, dropping onto the couch next to Clint. “So, are you-” he started, and then was cut off by Clint’s phone ringing.

“Aw shit,” muttered Clint when he glanced at the screen. “Uh, hi,” he said as he answered it. “How’s it going?”

He winced at whatever was said to him in reply. “Yeah, okay, Kate, listen, it’s not-” He was cut off, and then winced. “Yes, yes, sorry, sorry,” he said, standing up. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Twenty minutes, max.” He hung up and gave Bucky and Steve a sheepish look.

“So, I was actually on my way to my friend’s place to pick up my dog and I completely forgot.”

“There’s nothing more distracting than helping two strangers with their couch,” agreed Steve, as if the little shit didn’t get distracted by doing good deeds all the time. Okay, so, mostly the kind of good deeds that came with a fist fight he’d spectacularly lose, but the theory was the same.

Clint grabbed his beer and drained it in one go, which stalled Bucky’s brain for a moment. Jesus, so hot, how was that allowed?

“Thanks for the beer,” said Clint, and headed for the door, and Bucky suddenly realised he was losing his chance with him.

He stood up as if he could stop him, then paused uselessly. What was he meant to do?

“Thanks for your help,” said Steve.

Clint turned back for a moment at the door and sent them a sloppy salute and a wink aimed very clearly at Bucky. “No problem. See you around.”

And then he was gone. Bucky stared after him, then looked back at Steve, who rolled his eyes. “So, are we going to talk about how you fucked that up?”

“No,” decided Bucky, and headed for his room so he could sulk about it. Typical that as soon as he decided to make a move and take a risk, his opportunity walked out the door. That was just how his life went.

****

There he was. Bucky curled his hand tighter around the edge of the bench and watched as Clint came in through the park gate, following his overexcited dog. He paused long enough to take the dog’s leash off, then pulled out a ball to throw for him.

This was it, this was what Bucky had been sitting here for nearly two hours waiting for. He didn’t move.

Clint was wearing a tight purple t-shirt and his hair was a mess, as if he’d only just pulled himself out of bed. Bucky could imagine waking up to that in the morning. Fuck, he really wanted to wake up to that in the morning.

Clint bent to take the ball from his dog, then got engaged in a wrestling match with him, eventually toppling over onto the grass as the dog attacked his face with licks. Bucky could hear his laughter.

Right, okay, he was going to do this. He stood up, shoved his hand in his pocket, then pulled it back out again so he wouldn’t look awkward and closed off, and headed over.

“Hi,” he said when he reached the pile of Clint and the dog, then wondered why the hell he hadn’t come up with something more suave as an opening line. He’d had two hours to think about it, after all.

Clint tore his eyes away from his dog. “Built Guy!” he said happily, then blinked and went faintly pink. “Uh, I mean, Bucky. Hi.”

And just like that, Bucky’s nerves were swept away. Clint had his own nickname for Bucky based on his looks and he’d just blurted it out without thinking. How the hell could Bucky find this guy intimidating? He was way too adorable.

Plus, it made him want to see what else he could get Clint to blurt out at inappropriate times, and what else might make him flush up like that.

Bucky grinned down at Clint. “Hey, Hot Dog Guy.”

“Hot Dog Guy?” repeated Clint. “Is that, like, the hot guy with the dog, the guy with the hot dog, or the guy with hot dogs? Because I have some questions if it’s the second one.”

Bucky looked down at the dog, who was still half on top of Clint, so that he could pet him without even looking, as if by habit. “I mean, it’s a pretty dog, but I actually mean the first one.” He gestured back at his bench. “I’ve been sitting there for an hour or two most days for a while, and I kinda gave the regulars nicknames.”

Clint pushed the dog away and stood up, grabbing the ball up at the same time. “And mine was Hot Dog Guy? Man, that’s so much better than Built Guy.” Clint threw the ball and the dog bounded off after it. “Wait, you’ve been sitting over there and I never even noticed you? But, c’mon! Look at you! No way I didn’t notice someone that good-looking.”

Bucky did his best not to look like he was flushing at the compliment. “You always seemed pretty focused on your dog, I guess.”

Clint shook his head. “I am bitterly disappointed in myself. Who else has been coming through here that I’ve missed?”

“Tony Stark hangs out on the swings on Tuesdays,” said Bucky. “And Jennifer Lawrence uses the running track at the weekends.”

Clint snorted. “No way in hell Stark is here on Tuesdays. Playing on swings is clearly a Friday night kinda deal for him.” He gave Bucky an eyebrow waggle that made it clear he wasn’t talking about kids play equipment.

“Okay, I’m not gonna ask how you know that,” said Bucky. “I do have something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a few weeks, though.” He didn’t let himself pause, just barrelled straight ahead with it, keeping his tone as casual as their joking had been. “Do you want to get a coffee?”

Clint’s face lit up. “Fuck, yeah,” he said. “That would be- Wait, do you mean a coffee, or a _coffee_?”

“A _coffee_ ,” said Bucky. “Definitely a _coffee_. Steve seemed to think you’d be up for it.” Probably better not to mention the eavesdropping thing right now, not until it was part of the funny story of how they got together.

Or part of the tragic history of how he let the perfect guy get away, but Bucky wasn’t letting himself be negative today. This was going to work out.

“He’s not wrong,” said Clint. “When’s good for you? How about now? We could go for now, right? I know a place that will let me bring Lucky in.”

Bucky laughed at his enthusiasm. “Sure,” he agreed, and Clint beamed back, bouncing on his toes.

“This is so much better than Tony Stark on a sex swing.”

“Please tell me that’s not how you rate all your dates,” said Bucky, falling into step beside him as they started to head out of the park, the dog chasing around them.

“Well, it is now,” said Clint, throwing him a broad grin. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure you’re always gonna beat that.”

“I guess that’s the important thing,” said Bucky, daring himself to reach out and grab Clint’s hand in his. “I mean, you carried a couch six blocks for this, I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed.”

Clint squeezed his fingers. “I carried a couch six blocks to see you smile,” he corrected him. “And that was already more than worth it. This is all just an awesome bonus.”

Aw man, this guy was going to be the death of Bucky. He was really looking forward to it.


End file.
